More than 1 million teenage girls in the United States become pregnant each year; nearly half give birth. Why do these young people, who are hardly more than children themselves, become parents? This volume reviews in detail the trends in and consequences of teenage sexual behavior and offers thoughtful insights on the issues of sexual initiation, contraception, pregnancy, abortion, adoption, and the well-being of adolescent families. It provides a systematic assessment of the impact of various programmatic approaches, both preventive and ameliorative, in light of the growing scientific understanding of the topic.
Developing healthy sexual behaviors is critical to adolescents’ wellbeing. While more emphasis has been on negative outcomes, there are broad positive implications for physical health, mental health, intimate relationships, and identity development. To fully understand the impact, we need to understand both. In addition, the impact of sexual behavior is not universal, but may differ based on individuals’ demographic, relational, contextual, and attitudinal factors. This volume provides a framework for understanding the complex role of sexual behavior in adolescents’ lives, with a specific focus on the roles of sexual minority status, internet-based sexual experiences, relationship context, and sexual learning through formal and informal sex education in determining the outcomes of sexual behavior. It provides: A nuanced, multidimensional understanding of the role of sexual behavior in shaping adolescents’ development and well-being Important directions for future research Recommendations for sexuality education, prevention, and intervention programs. This is the 144th volume in this Jossey-Bass series New Directions for Child and Adolescent Development. Its mission is to provide scientific and scholarly presentations on cutting edge issues and concepts in this subject area. Each volume focuses on a specific new direction or research topic and is edited by experts from that field.
Sexuality in Adolescence: The Digital Generation provides a comprehensive and up-to-date overview of research and theory about adolescent sexuality in today’s world. The book examines biological, social and health-related approaches and reviews qualitative and quantitative research from psychology, sociology, epidemiology and medicine, emphasising the interplay between perspectives and privileging the voices of young people as they discuss the joys and pains of sexual awakening. The focus is on understanding healthy sexual development and its many variations, but problems and issues arising as young people make their journey to adult sexuality are also considered. The book presents global research on many key issues of our time, including the impact of media and technology on adolescent sexuality, changes in adolescent sexual behaviors and beliefs, sexual risk taking, sex education, and teen pregnancy and abortion. This fully revised and updated third edition of Sexuality in Adolescence also addresses the crucial issues of sexual diversity, sexual safety and sexual communication, including coercion, peer pressure and double standards. In Sexuality in Adolescence: The Digital Generation, the authors aim to promote sexual wellbeing, and argue for the importance of the adolescent period as a time for engendering healthy sexual attitudes and practices. This book will be valuable reading for students in the social, behavioural and health sciences who are interested in adolescent development and the topic of sexuality, as well as for professionals working with young people and families.
Susan Moore and Doreen Rosenthal review current work on adolescent sexual development, including data from their own studes on sexual risk-taking, and the social contexts in which young people form their sexual beliefs.
Adolescenceâ€"beginning with the onset of puberty and ending in the mid-20sâ€"is a critical period of development during which key areas of the brain mature and develop. These changes in brain structure, function, and connectivity mark adolescence as a period of opportunity to discover new vistas, to form relationships with peers and adults, and to explore one's developing identity. It is also a period of resilience that can ameliorate childhood setbacks and set the stage for a thriving trajectory over the life course. Because adolescents comprise nearly one-fourth of the entire U.S. population, the nation needs policies and practices that will better leverage these developmental opportunities to harness the promise of adolescenceâ€"rather than focusing myopically on containing its risks. This report examines the neurobiological and socio-behavioral science of adolescent development and outlines how this knowledge can be applied, both to promote adolescent well-being, resilience, and development, and to rectify structural barriers and inequalities in opportunity, enabling all adolescents to flourish.
Americans remain deeply ambivalent about teenage sexuality. Many presume that such uneasiness is rooted in religion. But how exactly does religion contribute to the formation of teenagers' sexual values and actions? What difference, if any, does religion make in adolescents' sexual attitudes and behaviors? Are abstinence pledges effective? What does it mean to be "emotionally ready" for sex? Who expresses regrets about their sexual activity and why? Tackling these and other questions, Forbidden Fruit tells the definitive story of the sexual values and practices of American teenagers, paying particular attention to how participating in organized religion shapes sexual decision-making. Merging analyses of three national surveys with stories drawn from interviews with over 250 teenagers across America, Mark Regnerus reviews how young people learn-and what they know-about sex from their parents, schools, peers and other sources. He examines what experiences teens profess to have had, and how they make sense of these experiences in light of their own identities as religious, moral, and responsible persons. Religion can and does matter, Regnerus finds, but religious claims are often swamped by other compelling sexual scripts. Particularly interesting is the emergence of what Regnerus calls a new middle class sexual morality which has little to do with a desire for virginity but nevertheless shuns intercourse in order to avoid risks associated with pregnancy and STDs. And strikingly, evangelical teens aren't less sexually active than their non-evangelical counterparts, they just tend to feel guiltier about it. In fact, Regnerus finds that few religious teens have internalized or are even able to articulate the sexual ethic taught by their denominations. The only-and largely ineffective-sexual message most religious teens are getting is, "Don't do it until you're married." Ultimately, Regnerus concludes, religion may influence adolescent sexual behavior, but it rarely motivates sexual decision making.
Romantic relationship formation and the engagement in sexual behaviors are normative and salient developmental tasks for adolescents and young adults. These developmental tasks are increasingly viewed from an ecological perspective, thus as strongly embedded in different social contexts, including the proximal social domains of parents, peers, and partners. This volume brings together seven recent empirical studies on adolescents’ and young adults’ romantic relationships and sexuality in the context of relationships with parents, peers, and partners. In this editorial introduction, we describe two important recent changes in the theoretical perspectives on emerging romantic relationships and sexual activity: from risky behaviors to normative tasks, and from individual to contextualized processes. We then discuss recent advances in empirical research on romantic relationships and sexuality of adolescents and young adults. After that, we review the seven studies in this volume, and discuss the contributions of these studies to the existing literature. Finally, we discuss directions for future research regarding how to further incorporate the interrelational perspective in empirical research on these topics, and how to bridge the gap between the research fields on romantic relationships and sexuality. This book was originally published as a special issue of the European Journal of Developmental Psychology.
